Transcript of Speaker Charlotte Danielson Framework...Domain 1 Introduction CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Domain 1 in the Framework for Teaching concerns planning and preparation. Planning

Transcript of Speaker

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Charlotte Danielson Framework22 Components of Great Teaching

Module 1

Domain 1: Planning and Preparation

Program Introduction

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: My name is Charlotte Danielson, and I’m the author ofthe book Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching; that many schools andschool districts across the U.S. and overseas, actually, use to define good teaching. What itoffers is a description of practice based on research that has been demonstrated to promotelearning by students.

In this program, I will describe briefly each of the four domains and then also briefly allof the components that are part of that domain. Domain 1 has six components; Domains 2 and 3each have five; and Domain 4 has six. They all refer to somewhat different aspects of teaching,but they are all integrated together in this extremely complex work called teaching.

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Domain 1 Introduction

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Domain 1 in the Framework for Teaching concernsplanning and preparation. Planning and preparation is behind-the-scenes work for teaching. Ifyou observe a teacher’s classroom, you may see a lot of indirect evidence of the quality of theirplanning. You won’t see it actually, though, because it’s already happened; it’s been done.

Good planning is really critical to good teaching. Some highly experienced teachers cansort of make things up as they go along; but even really experienced teachers can’t do that forvery long. You need a good plan. However, you also have to learn how to adjust and modify asyou go; so, the planning and the teaching have an interactive relationship, but good teachers planwell, period. It doesn’t mean they can always execute it well, but they plan well; and they takeinto account, certainly, their district’s curriculum or their state standards.

They have to take into account their students. They have to be knowledgeable about theresources they have available to them. They have to plan not only what the students will do andhow they will present content, but they also have to plan for how they’re going to assess whetheror not the students have actually learned that content.



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There’s a great deal of intellectual energy that goes into good planning, and goodteachers do it well.

Component 1A – Demonstrates Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Component 1A is demonstrating knowledge of contentand pedagogy. It’s the knowledge of the subject and how to teach it. This is a criticallyimportant aspect of teaching. That is, teachers can’t teach things they don’t know; and there aresome people who think, Well, so long as I stay one page or two ahead of the students, I’m goingto be okay. That’s clearly inadequate.

There’s a lot about a discipline in any subject that teachers need to have a richunderstanding of. There are the essential concepts of the discipline. There are the prerequisiterelationships that exists among those concepts. There is the structure of the discipline and themethods of inquiry. For example, mathematics has a number of strands included in it, such asnumber theory, statistics and probability, geometry and so on. Those are treated separately fromeach other, but they clearly relate together. Every discipline has such strands.

Understanding the subject to be taught includes understanding its critical concepts andhow those relate to each other. It has to do with knowing how people engage in that subject. Forexample, in science, the concepts and facts in science aren’t just given to us; they have beendiscovered through inquiry. And scientific inquiry is a critical aspect of understanding science.You can’t be said to understand science if you don’t know how it’s done.

Same thing with history, for example. We learn what happened in history, but history isreinterpreted. Every generation reinterprets the same events because we know more now. Youcan find more primary documents; you can understand it from different perspectives.

Understanding the subject is not a trivial matter or staying a day or two ahead of thestudents. Understanding the subject is part of what’s important here. The other part of what’simportant is knowing how to teach it to students; that is the pedagogy. Different subjects havedifferent, if you like, signature pedagogies to them. Some of it is understanding just the facts,understanding the concepts, understanding the methods of inquiry and how students learn thosethings.

Sometimes a presentation is what’s needed. Teaching writing has very importantpedagogical aspects to it. Students have to write, and there’s been a great deal of research inhow to help students learn to write. Part of understanding writing is not just how to writeoneself; it’s to engage students in learning to write and to getting better at writing.

The balance between knowledge of the content and knowledge of the content-specificpedagogy shifts between different levels of schooling and in different subjects. For example, in



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science, the subject itself has evolved rather rapidly. Biology today is not the same as it was 20years ago, certainly not 30. It’s really evolved as scientists have learned more.

Reading, on the other hand, the act of reading is still pretty much the same as it alwayshas been; and it has to do with understanding and being able to make sense of squiggles onpaper. That hasn’t changed. But what has evolved is how to teach students to read.Understanding the evolving methodologies, the pedagogy, in other words, is critical for expertisein teaching.

Another important and interesting aspect of understanding content is understanding thecommon misconceptions that students have. There are patterns of those. It turns out that almostevery student, for example, say, middle school student, has a firm but wrong idea about light, forexample. They think that light comes from the objects into our eyes. In fact, it’s not that way;and, yet, that’s what they believe.

Some of these misconceptions are remarkably stable over time. There have beeninterviews of college students, university students, on their graduation day who majored inscience who could not explain why it is that it’s warmer in the summer and colder in the winter.They will say things like, Well, the earth is closer to the sun in the summer than the winter.Well, actually, it’s not, in fact. It’s further away. And, anyway, even if it were, how would youexplain the southern hemisphere. In our summer, if we were closer to the sun, they would alsobe closer to the sun, and they’re having winter. It clearly is an inadequate explanation forsummer and winter; and these are college students. And, yet, they hold on to a childlike viewthat it’s warmer when you get close to things like a fire. Well, that works for fires. It doesn’twork for the sun. In fact, in the sun, it has to do with the tilt of the earth, not the proximity to thesun at all.

These misconceptions are held by students; and they’re actually rather reluctant to givethem up in some cases. Understanding those is part of understanding the subject andunderstanding how students learn those subjects.

Because the subjects we teach and the ways we have discovered and are continuing learnthe methods for teaching those change; there is, of course, an obligation on the part of everyteacher to stay abreast of those developments. Otherwise, our teaching becomes rather stagnantand actually stale. In all aspects of teaching, there is an obligation to stay current and stayabreast.

In knowledge of content and knowledge of pedagogy, it’s absolutely critical.



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Component 1B – Demonstrating Knowledge of Students; Part One

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Component 1B in the Framework for Teaching isdemonstrating knowledge of students. It’s in the planning domain, so it has to do with theplanning one does to know one’s students so one can teach them well.

This is a really important aspect of teaching; that is, we don’t just teach, say, chemistry;we teach chemistry to students. Unless our students actually learn chemistry, we can’t reallyhave been said to teach it. That is, teaching is that which causes learning; and, only when youunderstand who your students are can you plan effectively to engage them in the content.

There are several different aspects of knowing one’s students. One is knowing thegeneral characteristics of the age group. That is, 5-year-olds and 12-year-olds and 16-year-oldsare very different from one another in a lot of different aspects, obviously. But in those aspectsthat are important in learning, it has to do with their cognitive structures which do evolve.

Young children have very unstable ideas about things like number. They’re not reallyconvinced that every time you have three objects and you combine with them two objects thatevery time it ends with five. They have to learn that. Once they have, and that concept is stableand established; then you can use that for other things. Same thing with all kinds of otherconcepts.

With older students, the concept of, let’s say in science, separating and controllingvariables, for example. Fourth grade students don’t really get that. Most middle school studentsand high school students get that if they’ve had the right experiences to develop it; but it doesn’tmake sense to even try to teach it to, say, eight-year-olds because you’re not going to be able tobe successful. It has to do with the way their brain develops.

Understanding those aspects of students is important in planning. And there are, ofcourse, emotional and social aspects of maturation that are important as well. That is, theimportance of peer group, for example. You don’t see that with five-year-olds. Five-year-oldsengage in parallel play. They can be all be playing at the sandbox, say; but they’re not reallyplaying with each other. They’re playing individually. As they get older, their relationships withtheir classmates become central to the quality of their life.

Another important aspect of knowing one’s students in a general way, in addition toknowing the general characteristics of development has to do with understanding how learninghappens in general. I think there’s one sentence that captures this, and it sounds almost dumb tosay it; but I will because a lot of things flow from it. That is that learning is done by the learnerthrough an active, intellectual process.

That is, we learn because of what we do; and doing might be listening to a presentation ora video; but it’s mostly involved in problem-solving and figuring things out and trying out an



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idea and see if it works; that sort of thing. If anybody, an adult or a student, considers things thatthey know well and how they learn them; it’s not usually from reading a book. It’s usually fromdoing something.

That active nature of learning is essential for teachers to understand so that when theydesign their lessons later, they’ll be able to design them in such a way that students are actuallyactive.

Component 1B – Demonstrating Knowledge of Students; Part Two

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Now, of course, in any class you have, let’s say fourthgraders, let’s say, nine-years-old or eighth-graders. That is, you have a group of students whoare roughly the same age usually. However, not every student in that class is exactly alike. Weknow this. Any parent who has raised kids knows this – that children are different from eachother in the patterns that I just said, the developmental things; but also in terms of their interests,their skills, what they get excited about, what they’re good at. Part of knowing one’s students fora teacher is to know those things about their kids. What do they like to do outside of school?

When teachers can build on those interests, it can bring learning to life for some kids forwhom it might not be. The literature is filled with anecdotal accounts where, let’s say, a studentwas keenly interested in baseball and is good at it. Say he’s a pitcher. And the teacher is tryingto teach writing, let’s say. Well, okay, I’m going to ask this student, if I’m trying to teachexpository writing, I’m going to ask this student to write an essay to teach me something aboutbaseball that he really knows. And he’s motivated to tell me about it because he wants me tounderstand it’s a passion of his. We can develop his writing skills around something that he iskeenly interested in.

Moreover, students have interests, certainly, and some of them you don’t see in schoolunless you learn about them. Some of them are related absolutely to what goes on in school, likewhere kids are in the curriculum. If a student hasn’t learned, let’s say, understood place value;they’re going to have difficulty with regrouping in elementary mathematics because of theprerequisite relationships within the subject itself, and then because those things build on eachother.

As a teacher, I need to know what my kids know that is relevant to how well they’ll beable to engage with the learning I have planned for them.

In addition to all of that, our students live in communities; and sometimes thosecommunities are in a culture rather different from our own. We need to understand at leastenough about the diverse cultures of the students in our class so that, at the very least, we don’tcause offense to the students or their families, of course; and that’s another aspect of this. Butright now we’re just talking about the students.



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There are some cultures where it is disrespectful to challenge authority, for instance.Well, we might want our students to learn to be critical in their thinking, not in their attitude; butthat is to not take other people’s word for it unless they check it out. That is, we want to teachargumentation, evidence. We want kids to be able to take a position and defend it, to analyzeother people’s arguments. That may be a more difficult thing for students from somebackgrounds to understand the importance of or to understand that it’s not disrespectful. Weneed to know that they have that attitude. They’re not just being obstinate. They are acting on adeeply held cultural belief that we need to understand. I’m sure we can help them becomecritical thinkers, but we need to be aware of where they’re coming from.

Some teachers are quite resourceful in learning about their students’ backgrounds andwill be active in the community when they can, and go to kids’ athletic events or to the schoolplay or whatever; and they really reach out to the students and their families in order to learnabout them. That takes time; but it also pays off in the relationships we build with the studentsand their families and in our understanding of where the students are sort of coming from.

There’s one last aspect of understanding our students as individuals that we can’toverlook; and that is that there may be individual students in our class who have particularlearning needs. Some of those are recognized. Many of them are recognized by the school, andthey have an IEP, for example, or an aide to help them if they have a serious learning disability;or they go to a pullout class for certain parts of the day. But children have just different learningapproaches to learning that we have to be attuned to, particularly if they are a really special needsstudents. Of course, there may be a student with a medical condition that we have to be awareof; a student on medication that we need to be watchful to make sure that something is notdeveloping with that student that we need to take action about.

Knowledge of students is essential, both for our relationships with them and for ourplanning of learning experiences that will yield the learning we want.

Component 1C – Setting Instructional Outcomes

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Component 1C in the Framework for Teaching deals withsetting instructional outcomes. It, in itself, is grounded in an assumption that teaching is apurposeful activity; that is, we teach because we want to cause learning. Well, what is thelearning we want to cause?

It makes sense for any day or any week, a unit, even an entire a year—you can think of itas very short-term or quite long-term—by the time the students leave here, let’s say, today, whatis it that I want them to know or understand or be able to do that right now they don’t? What isthe learning?

This is not the same thing as what is it we are going to do; right. We’re going to take awalk, walking tour around the school. That’s an activity; that’s not an outcome. My outcome



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might be that I want them to understand the different trees on the school property, for example.Or a high school English teacher might say, We’re going to do Hamlet. We’re doing Hamlet.For what purpose, actually? Not that it’s a bad thing for students to read Hamlet. It’s a majorpiece of literature; but exactly what is it you want them to learn from reading Hamlet? Does ithave to do with the plot structure, with the use of language in the Elizabethan Period? Does ithave to do with dialog, characterization? What is it exactly?

It’s important that teachers be able to articulate the learning that they’re trying tocultivate. That’s what setting instructional outcomes is about.

It’s important to recognize that even if a school or a district has an established curriculumand mandated materials, even, that that doesn’t substitute for a teacher’s responsibility to setinstructional outcomes. That is, my textbook that I have to use might say here are the objectivesfor this lesson. That helps, actually; but it’s not sufficient because they don’t know my kids.They don’t know my students. I’m the only one who can build that bridge between whatsomebody else has said my students have to learn by some time and that they may be tested onand what I’m going to do today or this week. I’m the one who has to do that. I’m the only onewho can do that; and that’s why I need to know my subject well, and I need to understand mystudents.

Instructional outcomes have to be worthwhile, not just trivial learning. Teachers have tothink carefully about what is actually worth learning. Of all of the things that students couldlearn, some are critically more important than others. This is not to say that we might think of aslow-level facts, say—factoids some people might call them—are unimportant. That is, one ofthe things about an educated person is that that person knows a lot; and they can relate facts fromone situation to those in another, or can see the patterns in, let’s say, revolutions. In order to dothat, you have to have studied a lot of revolutions to see that this is what tends to happen inrevolutions, and there’s often a counterrevolution that follows on the heels of the revolution.

This is a challenge to any teacher and a curriculum committee; but every teacher knowingwhat to emphasize, what’s important, what will endure as understandings for students to have;and what’s the balance between sort of low-level stuff and high level stuff. The low-level stuff,in my view, should always contribute to higher-level understanding.

Some things we just plain have to know and routinize and learn by heart like the timestables. We can’t be punching into a calculator every time we need to now what is eight timessix. We need to know that. But some other things we can. I don’t need to know the square rootsof everything all the time. I could go find that out if I ever would want to.

This balance between what we have in our heads and what’s available to us, especiallywith the easy access to the internet and so on, that’s a challenge for teachers to work through.



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There are several different types of instructional outcomes, and they’re all important.There are, of course, facts; that is factual and procedural knowledge, like how do you do things,how do you clean glassware in a lab, how do you solve this type of a math problem; how do youfactor polynomials. Even those facts and procedures are grounded in some conceptualunderstanding, which is a second important category. That is, in order to understand how tofactor polynomials, you need to understand those concepts, those algebraic that underlie it. Onceyou’ve learned those, then the procedures for factoring polynomials become fairly routine; andyou recognize this is a difference of squares and know how to do that; that sort of thing.

We have factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, conceptual understanding, which, inmy view, is not only critically important but should underlie the procedural knowledge.

But then we have all kinds of things like thinking skills – analyzing data, making anargument, evaluating somebody else’s argument, seeing patterns, being able to make predictionsfor a relating test, hypotheses. These are thinking skills. They are independent of the facts. Weuse the facts, but they involve intellectual work; and they are different from just knowing thestuff.

In addition to all of that, there are, of course, communication skills – reading and writingmost critically; and there are loads of those things. Being able to effectively communicate withothers, you don’t sort of get good at that just by learning the facts of history, let’s say. Learningto communicate those to write well persuasively, to speak well and persuasively, to listencritically. Those are independent skills as are skills in group work – collaboration.

Most surveys of employers will say something to the effect that we never fire anemployee because they didn’t know algebra; we fired them because they can’t get along withtheir coworkers. It’s the getting along part. I can teach them the job. This is harder to teach, thegetting along, the working together, the respecting other people’s opinions, being open-mindedand so on.

Then, of course, there are dispositions, such as open-mindedness, perseverance. We wantour students not only to know how to read, we want them to like to read. We want them to beable to take another person’s perspective. People aren’t born knowing these things. We have toteach them. Some students will learn some of them in other places besides school; some willnot. It’s part of our obligation as teachers to be really clear about what it is we want kids to learnand how to help them learn those skills.

Component 1D – Demonstrates Knowledge of Resources

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Teachers in some places teach in a bare room with noresources, and they teach well – some of them teach well. It’s enormously more difficult,however. My first teaching, actually, was in a school that had almost no resources. When I wentinto my classroom, it was completely bare; and I had to make everything; and I did. That’s why



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it was such a hard job because it was until midnight every night of just making stuff andspending some of my own money to buy stuff and so on.

We know that there is quite a diverse range of resources available to teachers to use intheir teaching. There are a couple of different kinds of resources, and skilled teachers use themwell. There are, of course, all of the types of resources that teachers use in their classroom –there are manipulative materials, the maps, the charts, the textbooks, lab equipment, chemicals,all of the normal stuff you think of when you think of resources.

There are also resources that teachers pull in that might be human resources. They mightbe experts in the community or parents of students in the class. For example, they might taketheir students to their local museum or the aquarium; that is, the concert. Teachers make use alsoof resources from outside their classroom, as well as inside. They have to decide when to dothose, which will help students learn what it is they’ve decided they want them to learn.

In addition to all of that, there’s resources that students find on their own or that theteacher helps them find. For example, websites; obviously; resources in the library that studentsuse more or less independently, although the teacher may guide them to them to help themdevelop a concept, compare one thing to another, whatever it is; but the resources are external tothe actual class, but the teacher makes them available to students.

Some of the students find them on their own, by the way; and I think this is a mark ofvery skilled teaching that a teacher has taught the students how to do that, how to seek outresources they need.

Teachers, of course, have to seek out resources for their own learning; their ownprofessional growth. That often means going out and finding it; knowing who in your building isexpert at something. That’s a resource; that’s a resource. You can go visit that person and watchhow they lead a discussion, for example. That’s a resource that you need to know is available toyou when you’re teaching.

Then, of course, there are resources in the community for individual students who needthem. Most schools have programs to help children, for example, who don’t winter coats getthem; or there are resources in the community for students who, for example, Big Brother, BigSister programs, where there is something available after school where the kids can go and havea protected space and time to do their homework or to just hang out with their friends and playping pong, for example.

There are resources for students that sometimes the school will have a system for teachersto know about these and get access to them. Sometimes teachers themselves have to scoutaround and find out what’s available because they know their students, remember; and theyknow what would help those students; so they sometimes have to go looking and findingresources for their kids.



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Some schools, of course, have an adopted curriculum and adopted materials, and teachersare obliged to use those. That’s a fact of teaching; and, in general, is a help to teachers so theydon’t have to think through everything. However, most teachers, as they get more experience,discover that they can supplement the “official stuff” with other resources that they locate ontheir own or, in fact, maybe create on their own. That enriches the students’ experience, and it’sdone through the initiative of the teacher.

Component 1E – Designing Coherent Instruction; Part One

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Component 1E, Designing Coherent Instruction, is theheart of planning and preparation. It’s where it all comes together. We designed coherentinstruction based on our understanding of the subject and our understanding of the pedagogyassociated with that subject; our knowledge about students—where they are in their learning andwhat they’re interests are and their cultural backgrounds and so on; based on what our learningoutcomes are.

This is where we come together and we decide, okay, what are we going to actually dotomorrow. When we think about this as teachers, we have to bear in mind about how learninghappens. Learning is done by the learner through an active, intellectual process. It is temptingfor us, as teachers, to think that our students learn because of what we do. Actually, that’s notquite right. Our students don’t learn because of what we do; they learn because it’s what theydo.

Our challenge in instructional design is to figure out and to design learning experiencesthat are intrinsically interesting to students; that are fun in some way; engaging; that will yieldthe learning we want. Sometimes we have things available to us, like our established curriculumand our adopted materials that we can draw on. In designing instruction, teachers haveresources, of course. They have their established curriculum. They have the materials. Theremay be recommended activities in those materials that they could use; but they’re the only oneswho can know whether those in the materials would be right for their students. Almostinevitably, even if one isn’t creating them oneself, one has to adapt them; and at least look atthem critically and decide and select, I’ll do this one but not that one and have a good reason forthat.

There are several aspects of designing instruction, even after one has taken into accountthe sort of big ideas that it’s about what students do; and it should be aligned—that is, it shouldsupport the learning we want that we’ve already identified when we set our instructionaloutcomes in Component 1C. One of them has to do with coherence. It needs to hang together.It needs to be purposeful. Activities have to be sequenced. There has to be a logical sequenceand a developmental sequence. Easier activities are followed by more challenging ones, andthen more challenging ones. You don’t just jump into something very demanding that they



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haven’t built student skills and knowledge up to. There is a sequencing aspect and a coherenceaspect in the things that fit together.

Then there are issues of resources, pulling in the right resources at the right time.Sometimes students can create those resources. Sometimes they need to go find them.Sometimes the teacher needs to go find them.

Then, of course, because the activities that the kids are doing are likely to be differentfrom one day to the next even within the same lesson, the instructional strategies the teacher isusing have to vary accordingly. Part of the planning is to think, What is it I want the students todo to learn this concept? What does that mean I will do? What does that mean I need to haveready? I have to be prepared.

That’s why this is in Domain 1. It’s not just a matter of doing it; it’s a matter of planningit and being prepared. The most critical aspect of all of it is designing actually what it is you’regoing to have the students do.

Component 1E – Designing Coherent Instruction; Part Two

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: As a general rule, the activities and assignments, let’s say,that we ask students to do to promote their learning share some characteristics. Many of themare sort of problem-based; that is, kids are solving a problem. Instead of just sort of, let’s say, inmathematics at the middle school level, for example; instead of saying, Well here’s somerectangles. Find their area and find their perimeter. We could ask them to do that to understandarea and perimeter.

We could also say to them something like, You have 60 feet of fencing and a gate.What’s the largest dog run you could build using that 60 feet of fencing and a 4-foot gate. Oh,now that’s actually something I have to think about; and how many ways are there to do that. Inorder to solve that problem, they have to actually understand, of course. They have to do areaand perimeter and measure those things for different configurations of this dog run; but they’reactually solving a problem. It’s much more engaging to them; much more interesting.

Another aspect of activities and assignments that are likely to engage students deals withstudent choice; that they have some choice. As teachers, when we design those activities, wehave to design them in such a way that no matter what choice they made it would be okay withus. You can do this project or that project; I don’t actually care which one because they’re bothdesigned so they’ll yield what I want in the learning. Or, if we’ve been studying Hemmingwayin high school literature, I might make an assignment to the students to write an essay in the styleof Hemmingway. You can pick what you want to write about, but what I’m looking for is thatyou understand that style.



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Lastly, activities that engage students in learning are likely to be deep rather than broadand shallow. Kids dig in, which usually means that they’re involved in thinking, which is fun.Children and students don’t ever complain about school or rarely because it’s too hard. Theirmain complaint is that it’s boring. Our job here in this designing instruction is to design learningexperiences for kids that are not boring; that are fun in some broad definition of that term, whichusually means I’m thinking and I’m solving a problem; and that will result in the learnings that Iwant.

An advanced skill in designing learning activities and assignments for students has to dowith designing learning activities or selecting them or adapting them where there is a singleactivity, but that students can do it at many levels of skill. For example, let’s go back to the dogrun. At the very lowest level, when students are just getting into this, you might say, You have60 feet of fence and a 4-foot gate; find the area of a dog run you could create or find two. Oncestudents have done that, you say, What’s the biggest area you could create with that? They haveto actually do multiple. Because then the question is, Have you found all of the possibilities, anddo you know whether you have or not? How do you know that you have?

Then you might also expand it by saying, Suppose that you could make one side of thisdog run against a building; let’s say a barn or a house? Now, what’s the biggest dog run youcould build? As a last possibility, let’s imagine that this fencing is actually flexible; you canbend it. Now what’s the biggest dog run you could create? Students will discover, of course,that a circle with the same perimeter, same circumference, it would be, is the biggest. That’s aninteresting mathematical fact, and there are patterns to do with all of this. A square one, if youhave rigid, is going to be the biggest if it’s rectangular because it approaches a circle. Of course,if you had a dog run very narrow, skinny; you’re going to use up a lot of fencing and have a verysmall area.

This is all there for students to discover, and the pattern is there. When they then havegone through this at whatever level they can, they have acquired a much more powerfulunderstanding of area and perimeter than they ever would have done had you simply said, Hereare some figures; what’s the area; what’s the perimeter?

All in all then, designing coherent instruction brings together our understanding ofcontent, our knowledge of students. Clarity about what it is we’re wanting kids to learn andaccess and knowledge of resources into one place. Building on what we know about learningand about the learning of our individual students to design a sequence of learning experiencesthat are coherent and sequenced and have a structure to them.

Component 1F – Designing Student Assessments

CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: The last component in Domain 1 is 1F, Designing StudentAssessments; a really important aspect of planning in several distinct ways.



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The first way, and the sort of traditional way, relates to assessment of learning; that is,have kids actually learned what we thought they learned? We need to know that. We need toknow it for a lot of reasons. Most schools have to give grades. It’s typically based on kidstaking tests and so on. There are some high-stakes assessments, of course. At the high schoollevel, there may be AP exams. There are state-mandated assessments. All of those are designedto answer the question: Have the kids learned what we wanted them to learn?

In designing assessments of student learning, a teacher has to make some choices and tomake sure that the assessment they design or select is actually suitable to the learnings they werehoping for; that is, it has be aligned to the learning outcomes that they identified as part of 1C,Setting Instructional Outcomes.

There are three fundamental types of assessment. There are tests that are done undertesting conditions, usually in a limited time. It usually means no resources; not what you wroteon your palm or anything, and no other person to help you. Testing conditions. That’s a test.There are products. There are things kids create, such as a sculpture. In addition, there are whatwe could call performances; that is, they are things kids do. They give a speech. They do a skit.Some of them are structured like a skit or a speech; some of them are more spontaneous. I’m theteacher and I’m observing how my kids work in their groups. I have an instructional outcomethat has to do with them learning collaboration skills. The only way I’m going to know ifthey’ve learned that—you can’t give them a test on that. I’m going to watch them; and then youhave a conversation about that.

Even within tests there are two separate types of tests. There are what the measurementpeople call select test items; that is multiple-choice or true-false, where the students select from alist the right answer. Then there are constructed response or supply items where the studentactually writes something, does something, and we look at what they did.

When you think about the kinds of instructional outcomes that we mentioned earlier; thatis, there is factual knowledge, conceptual understanding. There’s procedural knowledge. Thereis thinking skills and communication skills and collaboration skills and dispositions. Onlyfactual knowledge and procedural knowledge are testable using a multiple-choice or true-falsekind of test.

For anything more rich in learning, we need some other kind of assessment. We need aconstructed response test if that’s what we’re doing. We need students to write. We need towatch them work. We need to have them solve problems, so we can see how they’re thinking.That is, we are, of necessity, having to be more varied in how we assess students if we’re seriousabout assessing those different types of learning outcomes.

What this means is that then teachers need those skills to know how to design aperformance assessment with a rubric, for example. This is not easy. Many teachers havelearned how to do that, and those who have not learned are learning; but that’s why it’s



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important; so that we have at our disposal techniques to assess student learning in the full rangeof learning outcomes we’ve set.

In addition, there’s one other big use of assessment, and teachers have discovered thatthey have another powerful tool in their toolbox. It’s not an assessment of learning, but it’sassessment for learning; that is, it’s using assessment to promote learning. The actual use offormative assessments is in Domain 3, Instruction; but the design of those formative assessmentsis in Domain 1 because it has to be planned. You have to decide as a teacher where will I pausein this lesson to check for understanding and how will I do that? Will I put out a question forevery student to respond to in some way that I can do a quick survey of the class and see whethereverybody understands this? What will I do? I need to do something though because whatwe’ve learned as a profession is that assessment is an integral part of learning and of teaching, sowe have to plan for it.

Assessment, designing student assessments, has these two rather distinct aspects –assessment of learning and assessment for learning; and we need to know them both.

Documents

Transcript of Speaker Charlotte Danielson Framework...Domain 1 Introduction CHARLOTTE DANIELSON: Domain 1 in the Framework for Teaching concerns planning and preparation. Planning